[3.7] Assassin COC Ice Nova spam + Bonus Vaal Ice Nova // GREAT for Legion mobs! UPDATED

Feeling nostalgic for COC, I wanted to try something out with cyclone, COC and AEO. The idea was to somehow use vaal ice nova to trigger legion mobs. I started out with vaal ice nova instead of regular ice nova in body armour, but ended up using a Taryn's Shiver in weapon swap because Vaal Ice Nova is too much fun not to dedicate a separate 6link to.

Although this build is not made for killing bosses, you'll mostly be fine. The amount of DPS is more than adequate. The biggest issue is that it's dodge/evasion based, so you will get a oneshot death sometimes.

UPDATE

With the help of some guild mates, I changed some things around in this build. No longer using ice nova and glacial cascade, but only ice nova now. Removed some attack speed nodes to stay under the 7.5 attacks/second for cyclone.

Playstyle

Go in guns blazing. Use vaal grace for max dodge, and cast a vortex for even more damage. Casting Vaal Grace or Vortex is instant, so you can do it while cycloning.

The Good
- huge aeo for cyclone, (vaal) ice nova, flesh and stone, blasphemy, herald of ice
- GREAT for Legion mobs, just need to run around cleaning up bosses
- fast clear speed
- good dps
- feels quick and well rounded to play
- dodge/evade/blind a lot of incoming hits
- can do all map mods comfortably (like ele reflect, no regen, no leech etc)
- great visual spam of spells

The Bad
- not a huge life pool, ~4600 at the moment
- needs passives and flasks for increasing run speed
- you WILL die to one-shots from bosses sometimes, because dodge/evasion based
- Vortex will obscure enemy ground effects so it's harder to see where you're walking

POB

https://pastebin.com/bSs0aFfR (minor lv96 update 08/07/2019)

Videos

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/sugoinl

T16 Elder Bog: https://youtu.be/TtE1lRhCftU - legion at 00:50

Old build variant:
T16 Vaal Temple: https://youtu.be/XAPNB6I5zIQ - legion at 01:50
T14 Dark Forest: https://youtu.be/20ebmo3zhpw - legion at 01:30
T15 Caldera: https://youtu.be/4LgH3OGmmnE - legion at 02:00
T13 Plaza: https://youtu.be/wrMDFsBEA0U - legion at 01:00
T11 Precinct + ele reflect: https://youtu.be/CE67oa-_bWE
lv82 Abyssal Lich: https://youtu.be/73bQYn3Ie6U
Red Elder T11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylFQfVIx5sU

Mechanics

- frozen trail is used to create additional frostbolts
- main ice nova is triggered on frostbolts for extra nova's
- casting Vortex while cycloning every so often will give extra damage. Keep arcane surge at level 5 max

Cast on crit / Cospris

With belt or boots with at least 14% cooldown reduction, just under 7.5 attacks/second for cyclone is what we want. Make sure not to go over 7.5 APS.

If you don't have a belt or boots with cooldown recovery, make sure to stay just under 6 attacks per second.

Vaal Ice Nova
Make sure to have 2 vaal ice nova gems!
- one in your armour, of which u use the regular ice nova version
- one in your weapon swap, of which u use the vaal ice nova version

When you have your main weapon active, any vaal gems in your alternative weapon swap will not get souls. To work around this, you can either grab a vaal ice nova as your main skill, or put another vaal ice nova in your boot/helm/gloves. Because different vaal ice nova gems share souls, now you can actually use the one on your alternative weapon swap! Smart thinking, Robin!

Also make sure you have the right vaal ice nova selected on your weapon swap skill toolbar.

Required items

- 6 link body armour (eg. tabula rasa)
- cospri's malice
- lycosidae

To be honest, you can start with any 5 socket body armour.
Just make sure to grab a one handed weapon with a high crit chance. Put cyclone + coc + crit chance + ice nova + glacial cascade and you're off. This works even while leveling. Just prioritize crit chance nodes over damage nodes. Also use blasphemy + assassins mark as soon as you can.


Main items and skills

Body armour - 6link Carcass Jack
This has a vaal ice nova as well, but I'm only using this one to collect souls for the VIN on weapon swap.



Main hand - Cospri's malice
Here you can have fun with almost whatever cold skill you want.
Frost bolt - needed for extra ice nova's
Ice Nova - more free ice nova's

And for third:
Life Leech - some extra survivability
Cold Penetration - some extra dps



Offhand - Lycosidae
Hit's can't be evaded is very nice for COC. Because you need to hit before you can crit. So this completely eliminates the need for accuracy, and blind doesn't affect us either.



Helm - Rat's nest
Cheap and great for our build. Crit, attack speed, movement speed.



Gloves - Rare eva/str
Resists, Life, Inc damage with hits against chilled
The "increased damage with hits against chilled enemies" is a nice mod for us, because all enemies are chilled and all our damage is with hits.




Boots - rare eva/es
Movement speed, life, resists, dodge attack hits if you can

I use an eva/es boots, so it's easier to get the right colors. Flesh And Stone should not be linked to the others, or it's mana reservation will go up.

By using fusings and crafting bench, try to get a 1+3 link item. Then use crafting bench "at least 1 red socket" to color the first socket red. And try a few times untill you get RBBB.

Keep arcane surge at level 5 max.



Belt

Needs at least 14% cooldown recovery so we can spam more spells from COC/Cospri's.

Get some life, resists and spell damage during flasks if you can.



Amulet

Pandemonius. Not required, but is a huge buff. Chilling and reducing action speed is great for defense, the damage and penetration for offense.


Rings

Just use some rares for the needed resists, attributes, life and some cold/spell damage or crit multiplier. Crit chance is nice, but not really needed because we already use assassins mark aura and a diamond flask.

Make sure to craft -7 mana cost on one ring. This makes cyclone not cost any mana, which means you can use almost all remaining mana to for precision aura. Just keep like 25mana free for Leap Slam and Vortex. Less mana cost also helps a lot for no-regen and no-leech maps.



Jewels

Any combination of;
- critical strike multiplier (global/spells/cold/elemental)
- life
- spell damage (regular/with shield)
- cold damage
- area damage
- damage

Try to get 4 of these stats on a jewel. If too expensive, get at least 3 of these stats per jewel.



Flasks

Just some generic utility flasks. Life, crit, dodge chance, evasion, run speed. You need one flask against bleeding, one against curses and one against chilling/freezing.




BONUS - weapon swap Taryn's shiver
There are probably better items, but this does the job fairly well. When you're starting out, just grab any 5 link you can get cheap, preferably with spell damage and/or cold damage.

I have tried many different gems for the 6th socket, elemental focus, controlled destruction, conc effect. But I feel increased critical strikes helps the most. Since you're only doing 1 cast, you want to be as sure as you can that that one cast also crits. The damage from a crit is enough to kill all regular mobs and most rares in a T16 map.

There is a little caveat though. Be careful with vaal ice nova in an ele reflect map. Because you're only immune to reflect for critical strikes. So when VIN doesn't crit, you will instadie xD

The order is:

1. Activate legion pilon thing
2. pop some flasks, at least the diamond flask
3. swap weapon slot (I believe it is "X" by default
4. when the mobs are visible, pop vaal ice nova
5. run around the edges like a madman and attack everything that isn't triggered yet

After the fight starts, I always like to kill a few monsters and then pop vaal ice nova once again :)



Ascendancy order

1. Unstable Infusion - so we start getting power charges
2. Opportunistic - so we get more movement speed, helps a lot during progression
3. Deadly Infusion - gives more stable crit chance than A&A
4. Ambush & Assassinate


Pantheon

I mostly run lunaris & garukhan, but use whatever u like best. (or what the scenario requires)

Bandits

Kill them all for extra passives.

Other

- use purity of ice instead of precision/herald of ice for shaper/elder fights

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I'm pretty sure this can be improved upon further.
Tips on how to improve the build are always welcome :)

Bye Bye, Not-a-Cockroach

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :-)

Will try it now, it will definitely be fun :)

What about resistances? Is hard to cap them? Want to try some CoC never played before :))

"

Dz3m00RR wrote:

What about resistances? Is hard to cap them? Want to try some CoC never played before :))

Resists will not be an issue for you. With this build you have quite a few rare items: gloves, boots, amulet, 2 rings and if you need it, optionaly the belt too. On these, you can easily find all resists you need. And life, try to get at least 60 life on each of them.
You also get a little bit of resist out of the tree.

Most important thing is to make sure that you get a high crit chance. Always have your diamond flask active, it helps tremendously.

what was your ascendancy order?

"

glennsharrock wrote:

what was your ascendancy order?

Unstable Infusion - so we get power charges
Opportunistic - so we get more movement speed
Deadly Infusion - more stable crit chance
Ambush & Assassinate

Thanks for asking, I'll add it to the post!

Hey Sugo, nice build. Do you have any advice on early leveling before picking up cyclone? And how did you path through the passive tree? Thanks in advance.

"

AlsoTzarkan wrote:

Hey Sugo, nice build. Do you have any advice on early leveling before picking up cyclone? And how did you path through the passive tree? Thanks in advance.

Cheers! Well, you can start with frost blades gem.
Frost Blades + Melee Phys + Ruthless + Ancestral Call
Use Ancestral Warchief totem for single target

If you upgrade you weapon every now & then, this can get you quite far. I would wait until switching to COC until you have: 5 link armour, 1st ascendancy, blasphemy + assassin's mark.

To start, just follow the tree down to get Heartseeker node. Get phase acrobatics. After first lab, get the power charge nodes.

Thanks Sugo, much appreciated!!